Chapter 3
Leilani
My life has felt like a series of unfortunate events for a long time. One disaster bleeds into the next, every decision leading me further and further away from the girl I was.
The girl who laughed easily and believed in a happy future.
It wouldn’t be half as awful were it my decisions that led to those disasters. Had I ruined my own life, maybe I could stomach it. But the choices I faced weren’t choices at all.
I try not to think about it often.
I often fail.
The memories seep back, quiet at first, then louder, then louder still, drowning out everything else. Like a cracked faucet you can’t shut off: drip, drip, drip, until you’re soaked.
There was a time when I walked a straight, smooth path, carefully paved by my father. It led to a bright future. A picture-perfect dream I had faith would come true.
But those paving stones turned out to be landmines, leaving me with nothing but dead ends and nowhere to go.
Despite growing up in a household where privilege and wealth were paid for by the man who earned money through unspeakable things, I never cared. My father was a monster, but never toward me. Never toward my mother or stepmother.
Unlike others I came across in the world of the mafia, Dad was perfect. He loved me dearly. Spoiled me rotten. Never failed to remind me that I was and always would be the most important person in his life.
Sure, he went out at night to work alongside Rhett Willard to kill, maim, bribe, and blackmail, but he never let a single shadow touch my skin.
His sins were not my burden to carry.
The only connection I had to the darkness he was drenched in was my best friend, Aalyiah Willard. We were the same age, both born into the kind of wealth that made the world bow at our feet, and were bonded before we were out of diapers.
We attended the same private schools, wore the same designer uniforms, learned the same etiquette, and both knew our fathers were untouchable.
Our similarities kept us close until our happiness ended. Mine was brutally ripped away a few short weeks before my sixteenth birthday, and then Aalyiah’s when she died last year.
One mundane evening three years ago, my safety net vanished overnight. I was dragged into the darkness my father shielded me from, and I learned that nothing lasts forever, least of all: peace.
It was a Sunday, our weekly movie night. My stepmother, Melanie, sat beside me on the couch, a blanket tucked over our legs. Dad came in smiling, a bowl of popcorn in hand, the smell of melting butter filling the room. For a second, it was perfect...
Gunfire came first. Two sharp cracks outside the house.
Melanie yelped, a half-scream half-whimper caught in her throat as her fingers clamped around my wrist. I blinked, confused, my brain scrambling to match the sound against the image of my father standing there holding popcorn.
Before I could process it, the front door burst open.
Wood splintered and three men in black balaclavas, their guns raised, poured inside.
Nothing remotely dangerous had ever happened to me.
Dad had never been a target, never sent me and Melanie away when things got heated because they never did.
Until that night.
I watched Dad whirl around, his hand flying toward the hidden compartment in the coffee table where he kept his gun... not fast enough.
One of the masked men grabbed him by the back of his shirt and slammed him to the ground.
His skull cracked against the floor so hard that it still echoes inside my mind sometimes, along with Melanie’s anguished scream.
She bolted upright, the blanket sliding from our laps, words I couldn’t catch pouring from her mouth, her voice high, laced with panic as she stumbled round the coffee table, reaching for Dad.
A man turned, lifting his black gun. In the same heartbeat a single shot ripped the room. The glass Melanie held slipped from her grasp. I remember it so clearly... how it left her fingers almost in slow motion, how the stem glinted under the light, how it shattered across the hardwood.
The bullet struck her clean between the eyes. One second she was there, desperate. Alive. Then her body folded, hitting the floor with a sickening thud.
Red seeped toward red across the wood, wine and blood mixing together until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Her death was quick.
I like to hope it was painless...
My father inhaled sharply, staring at his dead wife, his entire body locking up. I remember how his mouth opened but no sound came out. I remember the terror clouding his eyes. And I remember the clock ticking so loudly.
Until Dad screamed, lunging toward her.
He didn’t get far. The man who threw him down stomped on his back, pinning him there.
The third man stood in the doorway. He made no move. No sound. Just stared, long knife in hand, electric, piercing blue eyes burning my cheeks.
I’ve never experienced fear so profound. My imagination betrayed me instantly, conjuring every way he could use the blade. How he could drag it through my insides, slicing me open.
It wouldn’t be quick or merciful like the bullet that instantaneously killed my stepmother. No, this would be slow. Designed to make me feel every second.
Melanie’s killer eyed my father, nudging him with the tip of his scuffed, military boot. “One down. Before we proceed. Do you know why we’re here?”
He was so indifferent... like this was any other day, a business transaction at best.
Dad swallowed, his gaze darting between me and the others.
“N-No.”
That earned him a swift kick to the side of his head. He groaned, blood pooling between his teeth.
“Try again,” the man demanded, adjusting his grip on the gun. “Octavius wants to make sure you understand why you’re watching your wife and daughter die before we kill you.”
Thinking back, I must’ve been in shock.
My recollection is very different from what Anton Grey—the man in the doorway—relayed to me weeks later.
I could’ve sworn I sat frozen, silently watching the unfolding scene. He painted a more chilling picture.
I wasn’t silent. I was hysterical.
Every time my father was struck, I flinched as if I were taking the hit myself. Tears streamed down my face, and I shook so violently my teeth clattered. I begged, made futile promises, yelled anything I thought would make them stop.
That’s not how I remember it.
My brain bandaged the trauma with a calmer scenario: I sat motionless, staring at Anton, at his reaction when one of the other masked men zeroed in on me, gun raised, a murderous glint in his eyes.
Anton rolled his shoulders, shifting like a predator shaking off sleep. He lifted one hand, curled his fingers around the edges of his balaclava, and peeled the fabric away, revealing his face. Sharp features, hooked nose, bushy eyebrows, and a head of golden-brown hair.
He was unsettling. The lazy quirk of his lips, the air of calmness, boredom droning around him shattering faster than ice beneath a boot when he lunged forward.
I braced for the pain, certain he’d gut me right there in my family home, but when the knife found flesh, it wasn’t mine.
It sank clean into the neck of the man holding my father down. A wet, gurgling choke burst out of him, blood surging in a hot stream down his chest. The second man froze, muttering a string of profanities, horror overtaking his features.
Anton lunged, moving like something not entirely human. He stabbed with the ferocity of a starving wolf tearing its prey. His blade rose and fell, rose and fell, each motion faster, harder, blurring into a frenzy.
He didn’t stop for a long time. Locked in a trance, unaware of what he was doing anymore.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Every sound anchored me in the nightmare. The wet thud of the knife-strokes. The scrape of boots against blood-slick wood. The ragged growls tearing from Anton’s throat as he worked.
It was horrifying.
By the time he stopped, both men were nothing more than mangled, bloodied flesh. Unrecognizable.
Anton straightened, his chest heaving, every breath rough as he wiped his hands against his pants like that could erase what he’d done. It couldn’t. The blood stained his skin, his clothes, the entire room.
And through it all, his gaze never left me.
I should’ve looked away, but I was frozen, petrified.
He tilted his head, and when he spoke, his voice was so soft. Too soft for the carnage dripping from him. The sound of it twisted my stomach until I thought I’d be sick.
“You’re safe now, my little petal.”
He looked to my father, still kneeling on the floor, staring at the dead hitmen in his living room.
“You’ll live,” Anton said. “And more importantly...” He turned to me, expression morphing into sugary-sweet affection. “She’ll live. You just play along.”
Dad surged to his feet, shielding me with his body as if he hadn’t just witnessed the same execution I did.
“Uh-uh.” Anton tutted. “None of that. Move, or this ends badly.” He jerked his head, flicked his knife, and invisible hands forced my father aside.
“I’ll clean up the mess.” He glanced at the bodies, then back at Dad, his voice steady.
“I’ll get rid of the bodies. I’ll hide you somewhere Octavius won’t find you.
.. but it’ll cost you.” His mouth curled, and he lifted a finger, pointing straight at me.
“That sweet little thing... is mine now.”
“No!”
“Wrong answer.” Casually pulling a gun from the holster at his hip, Anton cracked his neck, leveling Dad with a pointed stare.
“No means you both die now. Yes means you both live. If you run, she dies. If you talk, she dies.” He turned to me.
“Same goes for you, sweetheart. Disobey me, he dies. Act out, he dies. Behave, and I’ll make sure you’re both always safe. ”
My heart pounded a painful rhythm, drumming against my ribs. A whoosh of blood was all I could hear, and the crazed look on his face while he killed those men... his sick pleasure at taking their lives... replayed before my eyes.
I knew he wasn’t bluffing.
I knew we had no choice...
A choice between life and death isn’t a choice. People are survivalists. We’re wired to preserve life and thrive.
I remember being rational, calculating, pondering my next move. I remember weighing the pros and cons as I gauged his age. Early forties. Tall, broad, deranged.
“You were hysterical, petal,” he told me weeks later, slowly dragging a comb through my hair, working in the conditioner. “You begged me not to kill your father. Begged me to hide him. Said you’d do anything. Said you’d be perfect for me.”
Funny how our brains work in survival mode. How they fabricate moments to make us feel stronger, more capable. My brain fooled me into thinking I’d held it together, that I made a conscious, rational decision.
“So?” Anton’s gaze cut between my father and me. “What’s the correct answer?”
My throat locked. The word stopped behind my teeth, fighting to stay buried. I wanted to scream no and claw my way out of there. I wanted to run until my legs gave out.
But I couldn’t.
Not with my father’s life balanced on the edge of Anton’s knife.
Not with mine dangling there too.
“Yes.”
One short word...
It flipped my life upside down. Tipped over the first domino and the series of unfortunate events began.